The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon Read online

  She did not look in the window but went straight inside, where one or two other customers were examining a selection of lace bonnets of the sort that people liked to put on babies’ heads. Some of these were attractive enough, in Mma Ramotswe’s view, but others were unduly fussy and only succeeded in making the baby look absurd.

  The woman who owned the shop was busy with the bonnets, but smiled in Mma Ramotswe’s direction and gave her a look that seemed to say, These people are being very slow to make up their minds, but I shall be with you before long. It was quite a lengthy message for a single look to convey, but it did so clearly enough.

  You could not buy a boy baby a bonnet like that, thought Mma Ramotswe. A cap, perhaps – one of those woollen caps that could be pulled down over the baby’s ears in cold weather. That would be a good present, though inappropriate in this heat. So one might get the baby one of the stuffed toys that were arranged along a section of shelving towards the back of the store. There was every imaginable creature: lions, chickens, even a stuffed anteater. She moved towards the shelf and reached for a lion. It was rather large for a stuffed toy – almost the size of a real lion cub – and it occurred to Mma Ramotswe that a baby might get something of a fright if given such an object.

  She replaced the lion and picked up in its stead a long green crocodile, complete with teeth represented by short tabs of white felt. What would a baby make of a crocodile? And was it a good idea to give a baby such a creature to love when real crocodiles were so completely unlovable? Should you not tell very small children to keep well away from crocodiles, rather than give them the message that crocodiles were suitable companions in the nursery?

  She looked at the crocodile. As it stared back at her with its carefully stitched brown eyes, she remembered that a long time ago, at the very beginning of her career as a private detective, she had been obliged to deal with a crocodile that had eaten somebody during a baptism ceremony in a river. It had been such an ill-advised thing to do – to immerse the new believers in a river known for its crocodiles. What did people expect? That the crocodiles would stay away out of respect? She shook her head. People forgot about obvious dangers and then were reminded sharply that Africa could be a dangerous place, for all the sunlight and the music. Yet everywhere was dangerous. The Tlokweng Road was dangerous if you tried to cross it in the face of a careering minibus or a truck. All roads were like that, wherever you went in the world, and if there were crocodiles in rivers in Botswana, then there were sharks in the sea off Durban, and Australia had even more poisonous snakes than Africa. She had read, too, that there were pirates in the Indian Ocean, and so it went on. You had to be aware of all the dangers, but you should not worry about them too much or you would end up sitting in your room afraid to go outside in case something bad happened.

  ‘Mma Ramotswe?’

  It was the owner of the store, who had now finished with her other customers.

  Mma Ramotswe struggled to remember the name of the woman.

  ‘Mma…’ she began.

  ‘I am Mmakosi. Your husband looks after my husband’s car, I think. He has seen you there, going into your office next to the garage.’

  Mma Ramotswe put down the stuffed crocodile and returned the owner’s greeting. She noticed that she used the naming practice that a woman might use in Botswana: Mmakosi, meaning that she was the mother of Kosi, who would be her first-born.

  ‘I have come about a present,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘It is a present for a new baby.’

  Mmakosi nodded and smiled. ‘It’s Mma Makutsi?’

  Mma Ramotswe was taken aback. Gaborone was a large town, but there were many occasions on which it behaved like a village – and a small village too. This was an example of exactly that: not only did Mmakosi know who she was, but she was also aware of the birth of the young Radiphuti.

  Mmakosi noticed her customer’s surprise. ‘Do not be too astonished, Mma. We hear these things. It is useful information for a shop like this.’

  Mma Ramotswe recovered her composure. ‘I should take lessons from you, Mma. I am a detective but so, it seems, are you.’

  ‘Informants, Mma – that’s the secret. Make sure that you have informants in the right places.’

  ‘Such as maternity wards?’

  Mmakosi’s eyes sparkled. ‘But you must always remember never to reveal your sources,’ she said. ‘I’m sure that you know all about that in your profession.’

  ‘I understand that,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘And if ever you need a new job, Mma, perhaps you could call me on the telephone…’

  They both laughed. Then Mmakosi said, ‘I hear it’s a boy.’

  ‘That is so, Mma. That’s good news for Phuti Radiphuti – he is the husband – but I always feel it must secretly be a bit disappointing for the mother. You can’t dress boy babies up in the same way as you can dress up girls.’

  ‘That’s changing, Mma. It used to be the case, but these days there are clothes that suit both sorts of baby.’

  ‘They’re putting lace on boys?’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Mmakosi. ‘But that may come. Men are wearing more feminine clothes these days, haven’t you noticed?’

  Mma Ramotswe was not sure whether she had noticed this or not. What were Charlie and Fanwell wearing these days? They were young men of fashion, but all she ever saw them in was mechanic’s overalls. For an absurd moment she saw the two of them in greasy overalls with lace cuffs and necks. And Mr J. L. B. Matekoni also in overalls with a delicate lace trim along the edge, perhaps with only a trace of grease here and there…

  ‘You’re smiling, Mma?’

  The ridiculous image faded. ‘I was thinking. My husband’s a mechanic, as you know, and his clothes are… Well, they are the sort of thing that men wear. They don’t like fussy clothes, as a general rule.’

  ‘Of course, Mma,’ said Mmakosi. ‘I understand that very well. My own husband is like that. His head is full of football, and there is no room for clothes.’ She paused. ‘Mind you, Mma, there is a course, you know. They have a course for men called the Modern Husband course. Have you heard of it?’

  ‘I have not, Mma. It sounds interesting.’

  ‘It is very good. I hear they teach men how to cook, or at least to think about cooking.’

  Mma Ramotswe’s attention was immediately engaged. ‘That sounds very useful.’

  ‘And then they have lectures on clothes and how to look smart. Then – and this is very important – there is part of the course called “How to make your wife feel special”. They teach them about buying presents for ladies and how to remember your wife’s birthday.’

  Mma Ramotswe laughed. ‘Men could write the date on a piece of paper and put it on the wall. Or they could have a book that had dates like that – birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and so on.’

  ‘They could do all of that,’ agreed Mmakosi. ‘But do they, Mma? Would men remember their wedding anniversary if we didn’t tell them? I do not think they would.’

  It was true, thought Mma Ramotswe. There were many things that men did not do, or only did because there were women there to remind them to do it. Some men, she believed, were almost entirely dependent on their wives and had to be reminded, perhaps, to breathe… ‘Remember to breathe,’ the wife might say as the husband left the house in the morning. ‘In, out. In, out. That’s it.’

  ‘This course, Mma? Where is it?’

  ‘I read about it in the newspaper, Mma. I forget where they said it would be. They were hoping to hold it again because it had been a great success the first time round.’

  ‘I shall look out for it,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘But now, Mma, there is the more pressing question of what to get for this new baby of Mma Makutsi’s.’

  ‘Come this way,’ said Mmakosi.

  Mma Ramotswe left Mmakosi’s shop with a parcel that was far too small to contain a soft toy – a stuffed lion, or elephant, or even a stuffed anteater. It was a neat rectangular package in which, wrapped in coloured tissue
paper, nestled a pair of child’s shoes, size zero. These were made of soft leather, dyed red, with bright blue laces, and had been chosen by Mmakosi herself, who had convinced Mma Ramotswe that they were an ideal present for the young Radiphuti.

  ‘That assistant of yours – your Mma Makutsi – is a lady who likes shoes, I believe,’ said Mmakosi. ‘And if the mother likes shoes, then you can be pretty sure that the baby is going to like shoes too.’

  Mma Ramotswe was astonished that Mmakosi should have known this detail of Mma Makutsi’s life, and expressed her surprise.

  ‘But I have seen her,’ exclaimed Mmakosi. ‘I have seen her going into the Pick and Pay. You can tell that she is a woman who appreciates shoes. You just have to look at her feet.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘She has some nice pairs of shoes now that she is married to Phuti Radiphuti. But even when she was single – and did not have much money – she was careful with her shoes.’

  ‘She is very wise,’ said Mmakosi. ‘If you look after your shoes…’ She left the unfinished aphorism hanging in the air, imparting to it a slight air of warning. And what, wondered Mma Ramotswe, would be the consequences of not looking after your shoes?

  ‘Then your shoes will last a long time,’ Mmakosi concluded.

  Mma Ramotswe savoured this piece of wisdom. ‘That is certainly true, Mma,’ she said at last. ‘As long as the shoes are well made in the beginning. That is the important thing.’

  Mmakosi was in complete agreement. ‘You get what you pay for,’ she said. ‘You don’t get what you deserve.’

  This, Mma Ramotswe felt, was dubious. Mmakosi’s observations about shoes might be true enough, but she was not sure that this proposition about life in general was entirely supportable. ‘That may be so sometimes, Mma,’ she pointed out. ‘But there are many cases, I think, in which people get exactly what they deserve. And that may not be what they think they should get.’

  She was thinking of Violet Sephotho as she said this. Violet, who seemed to have dedicated herself to being Mma Makutsi’s nemesis – on the grounds of jealousy going way back to their days in the Botswana Secretarial College – had got her just deserts in that her ploys had consistently failed. She had been dramatically exposed when she worked for a short time as an assistant at the Double Comfort Shop, her short-lived political career had been nipped in the bud, and her attempts to secure a wealthy husband had similarly met with no success. She had brought all of this on herself, and so she had, in a sense, got what she deserved. But even so, Mma Ramotswe reminded herself, she had a soul like everybody else and one should not crow over the defeat even of those who richly deserve to be defeated. That was dangerous because then you yourself might get what you deserve for revelling in the misfortunes of another. It was safer, perhaps, not to think of Violet at all…

  They had returned to the subject of shoes. ‘Children’s feet grow so quickly,’ said Mmakosi. ‘So I always say to people: get shoes that are always slightly too big for your child. Then turn your head for a week or two and – whoosh – the child’s toes will have filled the extra space. That is what I say, Mma Ramotswe.’

  Mma Ramotswe examined the tiny red shoes – boots, really – that had been selected for Mma Makutsi’s son. ‘These are size zero, Mma,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we should go for size one. Then he will grow into them.’

  Mmakosi shook her head. ‘No, Mma. These shoes are not like ordinary shoes. If you feel the toes, you will notice that the leather is very supple. These shoes can expand very easily to allow for growth. And they are not shoes for walking in, you know. These shoes are called crawling shoes. They are for when the child begins to crawl.’

  ‘But he’s only a few days old,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘He’s going nowhere.’

  ‘But he will,’ said Mmakosi. ‘He will start to crawl before too long, and these shoes will be there, ready for him. They are a very sensible present.’

  Mma Ramotswe was drawn to the shoes. It tickled her to think that she was giving shoes to Mma Makutsi, who had always taken a rather condescending attitude towards Mma Ramotswe’s own shoes, which were designed for comfort rather than for fashion. They were always the same: flat and brown, and fairly wide too, to cater to traditionally built feet. But they had never let her down and, unlike Mma Makutsi’s shoes, had never been sarcastic.

  ‘You know something, Mma?’ Mma Ramotswe said to Mmakosi. ‘Mma Makutsi’s shoes are very unusual. They…’ She stopped herself. She had been about to mention that Mma Makutsi’s shoes appeared to speak, but she realised that this would sound very odd to the shopkeeper.

  ‘Yes, Mma?’ prompted Mmakosi.

  ‘They are a very unusual colour. And so I think she will like these red shoes.’

  The purchase made, Mma Ramotswe went out into the covered square. The managers of the shopping centre had thoughtfully provided concrete benches for the comfort of tired shoppers, and for those who might not have been tired out by shopping but were tired at the thought of shopping. A few of these people now sat about on these benches, plastic bags of purchases resting at their feet, in some cases watching passers-by, in others looking vaguely into the distance, and in yet others half dozing in the drowsy warmth of the afternoon. A small group of four or five teenagers had congregated around one bench and were chatting about the things which teenagers liked to chat about and which adults, for all their efforts, singularly failed to understand. There was laughter and raised voices from this group, sufficient to attract a scowl of disapproval from a middle-aged man on a nearby bench. But Mma Ramotswe did not disapprove. Laughter, even teenage laughter, was something of which she would never disapprove, unless, of course, it was cruel laughter, which was always so easy to recognise from its higher pitch and sharper edge.

  Mma Ramotswe decided to sit down. She was not particularly tired – it was simply one of those occasions when she felt like sitting down. There was no reason why one should always be on the move. That was half the trouble with the world, she thought: not enough people took the time to sit down for a few minutes and look up at the sky or at whatever it was that was before you – a herd of cattle, perhaps, or a stretch of bush dotted with acacia trees, or the sinking of the evening sun into the Kalahari. You did not have to sit for long; even a few minutes was enough to remind you that if you spent your life rushing about, then the years would slip through your fingers without your really noticing it until suddenly they were gone and you were old and before long it would be that moment that comes to everybody – the time to leave Botswana for ever.

  A morbid notion, and Mma Ramotswe was not given to such things, so as she lowered herself on to the bench, the gift parcel on her lap, she turned her mind to something else altogether: the Sheba case. Although she had not started her actual investigation, she had been thinking about it, and thinking about a problem – even in a rather dreamy way – was often a good way of allowing the mind to come up with possibilities. What puzzled her about this case was that if anybody was lying, it would be the aunt: she was the one on whose word the whole matter rested. If Mma Sheba was right and Liso was not the real Liso, then there had to be a reason for the aunt to go along with that deception. Would she have an interest in stopping the real Liso from inheriting the farm? Would it be because he might evict her from her house? That was possible. Or did she want this other young man to inherit it because she could control him in some way? Perhaps she wanted to buy the farm at a knockdown price and had a secret agreement with him to sell it to her if she lied about his identity in order to enable him to inherit. Unlikely, she thought. Very unlikely.

  Her chain of thought was diverted when she looked up and saw two workmen struggling with several large plywood boards. The boards had been covering the window of a shop undergoing renovations, and now the renewed shop beneath was being revealed. She tried to envisage what had been there before. It had been, she seemed to recall, a shop that sold gardening equipment: spades and trowels, specialist rakes and gloves. These were things
that people liked to own, and would find quite useful, but not things that they would bother to buy. If you wanted a trowel, you hunted through the piles of old possessions that naturally accumulated in sheds and garages and as likely as not you found one, soil-encrusted and ancient, but a trowel nonetheless; you did not think of buying such a thing.

  She shook her head as she thought of the shop-owner’s disappointment at becoming yet another commercial failure. People had said that the same fate awaited her when she started the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. They had laughed and said that nobody would want the services of a detective agency in a society in which there were few secrets, and where, moreover, everybody prided themselves on how easily they could find out anything they wished to know. That is what they had said behind her back and in some cases even to her face. Yet here she was, years later, with a firm that had defied these Jeremiah-like predictions and was a well established, prosperous concern. Well, if not actually prosperous, then at least not a business that lost too much money.

  One of the workmen paused to mop his brow with a handkerchief. Yes, thought Mma Ramotswe, it is very hot, even here in the shade. Yet people had to work, even in this heat; they had to take boards off the front of shops, they had to cook meals in kitchens, they had to lie under cars and struggle to undo the nuts on oil sumps, they had to… Her attention was caught by the workman’s renewed struggles with the board. He had prised it off successfully and was shifting it to one side, revealing the lettering painted on the glass behind.

  Mma Ramotswe stared at the name: The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon. It took a moment or two, but then it came to her: she knew about this business. She had met Mma Soleti, its owner, who had previously operated her beauty salon from such unpromising small premises – no more than a shack, really – and who now was moving into this much smarter accommodation. This was indeed a business success.